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Russia's Mars Mission Raising Concerns
eldavojohn writes "Space.com has a blog on Russia's Phobos-Grunt project designed to explore the planet further. He voices concerns about part of this exploration that is dubbed LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) and backed by The Planetary Society that involves sending several samples of Earth's hardiest microbes to see if they can survive the round trip voyage. Space.com's correspondent Leonard David did some legwork to ensure that The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was being upheld as it prevents cross-contamination between planets and receives some interesting responses from experts on this mission. The Phobos-Grunt mission will also deploy a Chinese sub-satellite 'Firefly-1,' which will attempt to figure out how water on Mars disappeared. Unfortunately, The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt."
Article IX
In the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, States Parties to the Treaty shall be guided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance and shall conduct all their activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty. States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.
The debate is already in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" novel : should we protect other planets from earth's lifeforms ? While it would be nice to find definite proofs in favor or against panspermia, I would tend to be in favor of as much contamination as possible, as early as possible. Terraformation will eventually be scheduled. The sooner we start, the better.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Wouldn't that gravity well be better on the biology of those living there than the microgravity associated with smaller rocky bodies?
What evidence is there to support that hypothesis? Granted, it is not far fetched, but we don't actually KNOW what
level of gravity has what effects. My guess would be that some effects might be mitigated, maybe even completely, others
might not be significantly reduced at all.
Plus, wouldn't even a thin atmosphere be better for protection and help reduce the need for vacuum-proof structures than near-vacuum conditions?
No, because the atmosphere of Mars is already close enough to a vacuum that from a physiological standpoint the
difference is irrelevant. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is 6 millibars, 1/150th of the pressure at
the surface of the Earth. From a standpoint of engineering a structure or breathing, it is no better than a vacuum. Yet
from the standpoint of carrying dust into everything and possibly facilitating corrosion and other equipment damage it
could prove to be quite a serious problem. So, I would, as an engineer, MUCH rather deal with the problems of the Lunar
environment than the Martian environment, since I will avoid all of those problems.
Wouldn't Mars also be more desirable because it has mostly cleared the neighborhood of other heavenly objects such that the risk of one's home being smashed into by another particularly large rock is massively diminshed?
Exactly how often do you think main belt asteroids collide with each other? On average not often at all. In fact such
collisions probably only happen once in many millions of years, possibly billions of years. Those bodies which were in orbits which were likely to collide with things mostly did so billions of years ago and were either sent into orbits where they no longer hit other stuff or were pounded to bits long ago. The chances of an asteroid hitting Mars are actually probably at least as high as those of one asteroid hitting another. Besides, if you have the technology to live on an asteroid, you can probably shift its orbit by a few 100 meters if you ever need to...
Wouldn't the fact of working in an environment with an up, a down, and other gravity-based rules like that which we have on Earth be easier for workers who have to do things like maintenance, construction, and the like be better than attempting to work in microgravity where accidently losing a tool means that it's probably gone forever instead of being able to just bend down and pick it up off the ground?
Oh, it would probably be easier for you or me right now today, no doubt. However zero g assembly IN GENERAL should be
quite easy. No need for massive cranes, scaffolds, support structures, etc. I highly suspect that once we are even 1/8th
as knowledgeable about zero g construction as we are about 1 g construction today we will have a much easier time with it.
Wouldn't it be fairly practical to bore down into Mars to construct a habitat with significantly less materials (like basically a cap at the top of the bore hole) such that materials from Earth aren't depleted nearly as much for space?
And why wouldn't this solution work equally well when dealing with an asteroid? In fact it seems to me it would work much better and be much easier. You don't have to DIG anything, just dump a whole lot of material around your habitat if thats what you need to do. No need to worry about tunneling or weight, etc. It
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson